Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday March 26, 2011 @01:22AM
from the surely-sequels-will-follow dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apple [Friday] won a battle in an ongoing legal war with Nokia over patents that touch on pretty much all of Apple's product line. Since 2009, Apple and Nokia have sued and countersued each other into oblivion. In one particular legal action from May 2010, Nokia filed suit against Apple with a complaint to the ITC (International Trade Commission) alleging that Apple's iPhone and iPad 3G infringe on 5 of Nokia's patents."

Usually it is pretty clear whether there is infringement or not. Of course, there are the odd-ball cases where it is possible to quarrel over meanings of terms in the main claim (and that's what is usually done in court but if the arguments aren't good you're not going to win). But to imagine that Nokia's attorneys made 5 out of 5 wrong judgement calls is, well, strange.

Patent matters being handled in the US by non-specialized courts is not the best of things. If the ITC is equally competent then that is not the best of things too.

The reasoning behind the ruling is not yet available, according to TFA.

If you want to know why smart phones are $600+ a pop, crap like this is why. The patent arsenals these companies amass are there to destroy competition and nothing else. It isn't like Apple or Nokia would stop innovating if suddenly they didn't have patent protection. What it would mean is that 600 Silicon Valley startups could also jump into the cell phone game and drive the price into the dirt and innovation through the roof.

Smart phones are red hot. Everyone and their dog should be making these things using Chinese foundries. The fact that you need to be a multi-billion dollar company that can buy up patents and create your own arsenal (as Apple did) to touch the market means that patent law has effectively made this something only massive companies can do... not because of any great competitive advantage, but just due to government created legal blocks. Hell, even the companies currently in the game right now couldn't be in if they were not all cross licensing this crap, effectively making sure that no nasty upstarts can jump in offer up competition.

I'm happy Apple didn't lose, but the problem remains. Anyone without a few billion to their name an arsenal of patents is prevented from even putting a toe in the market. What a horrible waste.

Considering how many people Nokia has already managed to alienate with this move (employees, business partners & customers) it's probably their only chance to survive. And for Microsoft it's cheaper than to buy smaller companies and use those to build a distribution arm for their phone products.